Richard van der Ross: pioneering coloured educationist, activist and historian
Vice-chancellor of UWC known as ‘Uncle Dicky’
● Professor Richard van der Ross, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 96, was an anti-apartheid activist, educationist and the first black vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape. He was the first coloured person in South Africa to receive a doctorate — in philosophy from the University of Cape Town.
He accepted his appointment at UWC in 1975 with considerable misgivings. It was a construct of apartheid, of which he had been an outspoken opponent all his life. It was a bush college run by pro-government members of the Broederbond.
It was in the heart of the Cape Flats, where coloured people had been forcibly resettled after being kicked out of their homes in the “white” suburbs. Van der Ross himself had been removed from his house in Wynberg and lived in Belhar, next door to UWC. The students reflected the mood of anger and rebellion on the Cape Flats, which, in the 11 years Van der Ross headed UWC, became a seething cauldron of anti-apartheid action.
Van der Ross took the job because he cared about the education and progress of coloured people. He believed education would be their ultimate salvation, and UWC had to be the vehicle. His goal was to turn it into a respected university.
His approach was pragmatic and philosophical. He trod a path of compromise between students who wanted to use UWC as a platform to advance the anti-apartheid cause, and the government, which demanded that he keep a lid on protests. He felt the anger of students but couldn’t afford to forget that he was operating in a context where UWC was funded and governed under the Department of Coloured Affairs. He resisted the open defiance students, staff and activists off campus demanded because he believed it would lead to a situation of conflict and collapse.
Accusations of being co-opted and selling out were reinforced by his antiideological stance. Steeped in the Cape liberal tradition, Van der Ross had no ideology other than a belief in the rights of the individual to justice, dignity and freedom of expression. He believed in the free flow of ideas. He strove to liberalise UWC, to make it an open university where the rights of students of any ideological persuasion were protected, including their right to protest — provided they didn’t misbehave or trash the campus.
His approach made him a target for those who wanted to radicalise the campus. He was pelted with eggs and rotten tomatoes, which he accepted with good grace.
“Better men than I have had to put up with much more than a raw egg,” he said.
When he felt the issue warranted it he led student marches himself, such as in 1985 when he led a march to demand the release of student leaders and staff arrested under the state of emergency regulations.
“Today, the UWC has found its soul,” he told students in the university’s great hall.
“Viva, Dicky, viva!” they roared. By the time he left in 1986 he was “Uncle Dicky”.
Van der Ross was born in Plumstead, Cape Town, on November 17 1921. In the late 1930s he enrolled at UCT, where he obtained a teacher’s diploma, as well as a master’s and PhD in philosophy.
After teaching, he became principal of Battswood Teacher Training College in Wynberg. He got the job of principal of the prestigious, state-funded Hewat Teacher Training College, the premier educational institution in the coloured community.
But the government rescinded his appointment because of his history of political activism. He was demoralised and left Battswood to do community service in Kewtown, one of the poorest townships on the Cape Flats. In 1965 he was approached to be the first editor of the Cape Herald.
Soon after this he was appointed assistant planner of education at the Department of Coloured Affairs.
Van der Ross was the outstanding antiapartheid activist in the coloured community in the 1950s and ’60s. He was a founder of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation in 1953 but left when it joined the communist-controlled Congress movement. The Teachers Educational and Professional Association, of which he was president, became his political platform.
He wrote a number of historical books. His magnum opus was a four-volume sociopolitical history of the coloured people, which he worked on for years. It was published in condensed form in 1986 by UWC as The Rise and Decline of Apartheid: A Study of Political Movements among the Coloured People of South Africa 1880-1985. Other books included The Black Countess, which arose out of his curiosity about the naming of Martha Saal (hall) at Battswood. He traced it back to the daughter of a slave who married delinquent English aristocrat Harry Grey, sent to the Cape to clean up his act. She became Lady Grey, Countess of Stamford and benefactor of Battswood.
In Strawberry Lane he followed the plight of a coloured community, to which he traced his own origins, that had farmed flowers in Constantia since Simon van der Stel’s time and ended up selling flowers in Adderley Street after being evicted under the Group Areas Act in the ’60s. In 2015 he published In Our Own Skins: A Political History of the Coloured People.
Van der Ross became a member of the Cape legislature for the DA in 1994 and ambassador to Spain and Andorra in 1998 for four years.
His first wife, Frances, died in 1981. He married his second wife, Marie, when he was 80. He is survived by two children. – Chris Barron